Me? I'm next of kin?

That time I had to be all grown up when I didn't feel old enough to get served in a pub.

Photo by Melinda Gimpel on Unsplash

Sal was more a sister than an aunt. We grew up together in the same house. She was a teenager when I was an impressionable kid, and I idolised her. When she died, at least 20 years too young, it was a shock. She had gone into hospital for an operation and had died on the operating table. I was outside, waiting. I was smiling and cheerful as the surgeon and a nurse came to find me. I was asking how it had gone, how was she? They didn’t answer. Instead, they took me to a small room and told me she wouldn’t be coming home. After the obvious disbelief and shock, came the overwhelming realisation that I was the only adult left and the next-of-kin. Me, who still didn’t feel old enough to get served in a pub, was charged with this! I was the youngest, in what was once, a large family, but which had now withered down to a couple of cousins, an ageing uncle and my own offspring. I was it. It would be up to me to tell everyone, rehome her beloved cats, organise the funeral, pack up the house and deal with the estate. All while in shock, and all while grieving horribly.

It was a weird time. Anyone who has read my previous posts may have concluded that weird times are nothing new in my world, and they would be correct, but even for me, this challenging period threw up some beauties. To list them all would take a novel. So, for the purpose of brevity, here are the weirdest three.

The Weird Solicitor

The biggest nightmare for me was probate. I had no idea what this was, what it was for, how to do it and with no one left to ask, I decided I needed to find out. I found a local solicitor who did a 30-minute freebie, so I booked an appointment. The office was above a butcher’s shop on a busy High Street. The narrow staircase was dark, intensifying the smell of dead animals that wafted under the door. At the top, there was a seating area decorated in magnolia woodchip, with a few magazines on junk shop tables. A neat woman in standard office-wear appeared and told me that Mr Lillington-Smythe would be a few minutes. I was imagining the career path of the law graduate who ended up here. I wasn’t thinking of Helena Kennedy, that’s for sure. Maybe he’d committed a misdemeanour, maybe he was a British Saul Goodman. But he was free, potentially cheap, so he would do.

“Come,” came a loud voice from behind a door. The woman nodded towards it, so I hesitantly entered. Mr Lillington-Smythe was a large gentleman with a white shirt that was too tight for him and round cheeks, red with broken thread veins. His lips were too big for his face and his wild silver hair had been tamed with some greasy product that made me think of goose fat. Maybe it was just the smell from the butchers.

“Sit down, sit down my dear.” He gave a royal wave towards a chair that was half hiding behind a huge plant. “Do mind my Fiddle Leaf Fig, it was a gift from my brother. A dull man, but a talented gardener.” I sat down and leaned to the side so I could see him from behind the foliage. “Now, tell, me, how may I be of assistance?”

His booming voice, rolling ‘rrrs’ and theatrical intonation made him sound like he was on stage at the National. It took me all of 10 seconds to realise he was as mad as a balloon. I had my list of questions, which I took from my bag and unrolled as he looked on. I blathered about my aunt for a minute then said, “I’m not sure if I need a solicitor. I know nothing about probate, so I was hoping you could, well, tell me.”

“Ahhhhh I see,” he roared, “you want to ascertain if my services will be useful to you?” He leaned back in his chair, put both hands on his desk and stared at me, then turned to look out of the window as if in deep contemplation.

I nodded and said yes.

“Well, you see, I might ask you a question. I might ask, if your car were to break down, would you call a mechanic?”

“I suppose so.” I mumbled.

“And, my dear, if you had the unfortunate experience of finding your feet in a pool of water that had flowed, like the mighty Mississippi, through your kitchen, would you have the wherewithal, to know when to call a plumber?”

“Err, yes, but…”

“And if, in the event of a power outage, you found yourself literally, and I might say, given the nature of your enquiry, figuratively, in the dark, would you call an electrician?”

“Well, it would depend on…

“And if…

He wasn’t going to stop. I could see that now. This was what the free half hour was about; a bizarre sales pitch. He worked his way through the following professions: farrier, builder, roofer, IT professional, translator and tv repairer, before jolting me out of my trance with, “… so I suppose I can now reverse the question and say unto you, do YOU think you need a solicitor to deal with your dear deceased aunt’s estate?”

I glanced down at my list and pushed it back into my bag. “I think so, err…I’ll have a good think about it and get back to you,” I said, as I fought my way out of the fig leaf jungle and towards the exit. I expected him to keep on with the pitch, but it was clear he had done this a thousand times before. Only God only knows if, and when, it had ever been successful.

“As you wish. Goodbye my dear.” He already had his head down, filling out some paperwork, so I legged it, feeling not unlike Alice when she met the Mad Hatter. It looked like it was up to me and my old mate, Google again.

The Weird Love-Life

If fate puts you in charge of packing up a deceased person’s life, you must be prepared to discover some things that may come as a surprise. In this case, I discovered that my aunt, a divorcee in her prime, had rather an active love life. As she kept this largely to herself – or should I say, kept it from me - it was her best mate who offered to let them all (yes, them all) know about her passing. Phew! Got away with that one, you might think. Well, sort of. There was the small matter of getting the numbers off her mobile. That, and a comment from her bezzie that kept ringing in my ears, “Ooo watch out for the naughty photos.”

What the actual…? I called a family conference. I was not dealing with this on my own. It culminated in myself, my husband, Paddy, and my (adult, I must add) daughter, sitting cross-legged on the bed in a circle, with the phone in the centre, looking like we were trying to contact Sal via some cell-phone seance. The conversation went something like this…

Paddy – “I’m not looking. What if there’s a picture of Sal’s ‘Mary’ on there? Jesus, I’m not ready for that.”

Me – “And what if there are lots of strange men’s knobs. I’m not the dick police, I don’t want to work out who’s who from a dick line-up.”

We both look at the daughter – who says, “nooooooooooo waaaaay.”

We stare at it for ages. It isn’t going to go away.

Me – But there might be some great photos of Sal on there. I don’t want to throw them away with the phone, just because we’re all scared of genitals.

Paddy – Well look then.

Me – No, you look.

Paddy – You look.

Me – No, you look.

Repeat previous 2 lines a further 10 times.

Daughter – Oh for God’s sake, give it here.

We were all relieved to discover that although there was a couple of penis photos, they were jokey memes that she had sent to someone. Relieved? Very.

The Weird Craft Cupboard

Before Sal went down to surgery, she told me there was a bag of money in the spare room wardrobe, “in case the op doesn’t go well.” Ironically, I told her to stop being so bloody dramatic. Then, with everything that followed, I’d forgotten about it. A week or so later, I was staying at my uncle’s and had a 3am memory jolt. The next morning, I asked him to accompany me to get the money. I had no idea how much, but it seemed important to her, so I didn’t want to leave it in an empty house.

It didn’t sound complicated. It was in the spare room wardrobe. Easy. It’s funny how you can see something a million times but never really see it. I’d slept in that room a thousand times but never noticed that the wardrobe was a floor to ceiling, built-in, megarobe, with lots of doors and cupboards. We flung them all open and stood back. Sweet Jesus and the saints, it was packed to the gills with every type of bag you can imagine. Paper, plastic, gift bags, hessian shoppers, small organza, party bags, totes, leather handbags of every style and colour. It became apparent this was the craft cupboard. And that Sal was a craft hoarder.

It took us two hours to get all the bags out of the wardrobe and search them. We had no idea what, or how much we were looking for. More than once, we commented on the effort it was taking, when all we might find would be a tenner and a an out of date gift token. But we persevered until the wardrobe was empty.

“Are you absolutely sure she said this wardrobe?” My uncle was not being unreasonable.

I had no doubt. I grabbed the small ladders and got up high and started feeling about in case I missed something. Just as I was about to give up my fingers touched a string. I gave it a pull and a small, plastic wash bag appeared. We just looked at it, dumbly, like we had found an alien hiding in the corner. It contained £7000. I will never know why, when Sal had a perfectly good bank account, she had to keep £7k in a wash bag in the wardrobe, but she did.

Sal left us with so many questions about her life. They were, of course, her choices, and I’m sure if she had wanted to tell me about her colourful love life, craft hoarding and alternative banking arrangements, she would have. So, when I packed the house, I resisted the urge to dig around, read private letters and trawl through her belongings. I took a few personal items that meant something to me and watched the rest disappear down the road in a clearance van. Because in the end, the only thing that mattered was my memories, my piece of her life jigsaw, and knowing that, if she was looking down on me and watching the absolute bollock I made of wrapping her life up, she would have been laughing her head off.

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